Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

Monday, February 02, 2015

Bottlegate

1. I am not making this up.

Israel is suddenly awash with disclosures about the dirty campaign finances of the Israeli Labor Party. Shady under-the-table and behind-the-barn campaign financing is an old Labor Party technique. It was particularly slimy in the 1999 elections in Ehud Barak's campaign, where the campaign manager was none other than Isaac "Bozi" Herzog, the current head of the Labor Party. (Many Israeli politicians have infantile nicknames.) Illegal front groups were used to channel funds illegally into the earlier campaign for Barak. Among those indicted for criminal violations of campaign laws was the founder of Peace Now, Hebrew University Professor Amiram Goldblum, although the leftist Attorney General later decided to "freeze" that prosecution and not to proceed. See http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/HebrewU%20-%20Amiram%20Goldblum%20-%20Criminal%20Indictment%20Filed.htm

But the really amusing part of all this is the reaction of Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew. In Haaretz every single page of the "newspaper" is devoted to promoting the radical anti-Israel ideology of its owners and writers. The Haaretz gang is pretty openly cheerleading for the new Arab Unity Party, a strange shatnez mixing Stalinists with jihadi Islamists. Haaretz in its editorial today screams that everyone should stop complaining about the underground financing by V15 and its Labor Party clones. Instead they should be focusing on the biased media campaigning of Israel Hayom!! The daily freebie newspaper Israel Hayom is fairly conservative and pro-Netanyahu. That constitutes illegal under-the-table campaigning for Netanyahu, screams the editorial in the newspaper that cannot print the weather report without weaving it into an anti-Israel diatribe.

Here are a few excerpts from today's editorial at the completely non-partisan Haaretz:

'The daily paper Israel Hayom has worked since the day it first appeared to perpetuate Netanyahu's rule, and it frequently aligns with his immediate political interests. Israel Hayom is distributed for free; it has a large distribution; is financed by money from abroad; and its support for the prime minister is unreserved, both in normal times and during campaigns. The state comptroller's lame conclusion in the past – that it's a legitimate paper with an agenda – is unconvincing. Strict enforcement of the limits on campaign finance and campaign advertising must be applied equally, to parties on both sides of the political map.'

4. I assume you have been following the latest part of the Israeli media campaign to defeat Netanyahu. It is Bottlegate - the endless media attempt to scandalize and discredit Netanyahu because his wife supposedly returned some recyclable bottles from the Prime Minister's offices and kept the deposit change. Really. If it had been a Labor Party official's wife involved instead of Bibi's, the entire media would be chanting in unity how wonderful their commitment to the environment was!

The new media marching song is this:

As the Left implodes, its captive media invent Bottlegate!

99 bottles of leftist media bullshit on the wall, 99% bottle deposits returned If one of those bottles should happen to fall,98 bottles of leftist media bullshit on the wall,...

5. Marxist anti-democratic anti-Zionist Hebrew University professor Zev Sternhell, best known for his calls for terrorists to murder "settlers," calls for Destruction of the Israeli economy so that Israel will be forced to capitulate to the agenda of the Far Left and end "occupation".

'A radical change will not happen here as long as the present regime does not bring about a major national crisis. A failure such as Operation Protective Edge is not enough, since the heavy price of that conflict was paid primarily by the Palestinians.

'Therefore, the realistic alternative lies in external intervention that will be massive enough to shake Israelis out of the placidity of their comfortable lives.

'Only when everyone among us can feel the price of the occupation in their flesh, will the end to blue-and-white colonialism and apartheid come. Only when the economy is hit in a way that affects the overall standard of living, or when security is undermined as a result of a serious threat to American interests in the region, will the real treatment for eliminating the occupation and guaranteeing our future begin.'